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The Trust Paradox and Trust Corollary

Brands
that last – their journey is one looked upon with great veneration and
admiration. Every day a new brand takes birth, but only a few endure the test
of time. These brands are the names that have persisted through the sketchy
terrain of trust, and managed to etch themselves into the very psyches of the
consumer. This is what brands exist for – to last forever.

Several
research studies have been conducted around the world with an aim to decode the
complexities of brands that survive the length of time. With trust as the basis
of every relationship, and the crux of all social engagement, it is inevitable
that brands that last also garner a strong trust factor. Trust, which is a
consequence of the intricate combination of several components, is not so easily
understood. Yet, it can be learned over time, and like a well-trained athlete,
brands can make the right moves without much reflection.

To
measure Trust, we must know and measure its primary ingredients, aspects that
will uniformly hold true across audiences, geographies, and cultures. Our proprietary Trust Matrix measures trust based on 61 attributes – providing a
robust understanding of a brand’s trust factor.

The Trust
Conference is not just an event but a long overdue conversation between the
custodians of brand trust in India, and hopefully the beginning of an important
experience.

The Trust Paradox and Trust Corollary

Just as
we cannot ask for happiness and get it, one cannot ask to be trusted and get
trust. In the trust context, this problem gets stated as the Trust Paradox.
Brands that make blatant claims like “Most Trusted Brand” without any proof of
trust being established can be termed careless communication at best. At its
worst, such claims erode the very trust they are attempting to create.

If any
business, entity, brand, or individual solely focuses on building trust, it
will lose trust in the long run. The Trust Paradox implies that intense focus
on Trust itself is self-defeating. Trust is achieved from a combination of the
action, communication, perception, and being of the entity. When these are
worked upon, Trust is derived as a natural outcome. The Trust Corollary, the
axiomatic deduction from this paradox, helps find the primary ingredients of
Trust. Due to the enquiry that arose consequently, we assigned researchers to
investigate Trust further. It took more than two years and several hundred
hours of interviewing psychologists, communication experts, and sociologists on
the subject and at the end of the research, we painstakingly identified the
primary ingredients of Trust.

The Ten Behaviors of Trust

Non-Threatening Ambience: The
trust ambience is a necessary consideration for trust bonds to form. If the
ambience is not seen as completely secure, then building trust becomes
impossible. A comforting ambience through action and communication can
demonstrate high awareness of the brand’s perceptions.

Display of Empathy: A trust-conducive
environment can be created by displaying empathy. Empathy shows and reinforces
an emotional connect between the brands and the target audience. An empathic
brand is quick to perceive fresh opportunities with customers because of its
close emotional connection with them.

Shared Interest: There should be mutual
understanding and compatibility between the brand and the consumer. Common
interest symbolizes cultural and social uniformity, which leads to higher chances
of better engagement outcomes.

DemonstratedSincerity:
For a brand or an individual, display of sincerity has both social and personal
implications. A brand that displays sincerity shows high ethical and moral
values and integrity.

CorporateAltruism:
When a brand acts beyond areas of self-benefit and works for a larger, socially
beneficial cause, it is said to demonstrate corporate altruism. Corporate
altruism is an important composite that organically builds a high
trust-quotient for the brand.

Enthusiasm: To commensurately increase the chances of success,
brands should show greater involvement and energy; it naturally holds an
important position in building trust. Displayed enthusiasm also demonstrates
the brand’s self-assurance and shows a greater degree of brand confidence in
the result.

Outward Appearance: It is a natural indicator
of achievement, success, and good content. Hence, this becomes an important
determinant in the stakeholder’s perception. It is important for brands to not
just look appealing but to also ‘look the part’.

Perceived Competence:
Competence is the
ability to achieve successful results by possessing experience, knowledge, and
credentials. This composite is
a standard in all introduction presentations of organizations, where establishing
the perception of competence is an imperative to taking discussions forward.

Commanding Results: Commanding respect is the
trait of a leader and it is not easy for a brand to decipher how or why one
achieves it. A brand must not only be successful in its field to command
respect, it should also have strength of personality.

Accepting Responsibility: The
courage to accept failure is a primary component of a trusted relationship; brands
should have professional poise, balance, and stand by its decision to accept
its responsibilities.

Thus,
Trust is a social-glue that
brings stability to any relationship and balances its unstated terms of
engagement. Trust
impacts the behaviour and performance of businesses and brands in many
intriguing ways. It creates the foundation of a strong ‘brand connect’ with all
brands, converting simple awareness to strong commitment and helping
metamorphose normal brands into devoted ambassadors. A brand’s strong
relationships directly result in advantages like better acceptance, premium
perception, and better reliability of brand extensions and even allowance of
temporary quality deficiencies.

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